The Australian Pictorial Thesaurus in 2003 Presenter: Allison Kingscote ACOC Seminar Wesley Centre, Sydney 25 July 2003

The Australian Pictorial Thesaurus Introduction Background Operational management structure Day-to-day operations Future directions and access issues

Introduction APT is an online hierarchical thesaurus of specifically Australian subject terms Intended for indexing images and original materials in libraries, archives, museums Uses contemporary Australian words & phrases Free Terms arranged hierarchically Users can suggest new terms

Background Australian collections required a thesaurus of indexing terms of Australian terminology CASL (Council of Australian State Libraries) committed funding to development of an Australian thesaurus APT evolved from PICMAN database

Operational management structure

Day to day operations: Assessing proposed new terms for inclusion Communication with users Review of thesaurus hierarchy & web content Software upgrades/testing Alert to new developments

Future directions and access issues APT to become national standard Number of users is growing steadily Thesaurus purpose APT enhancing access to information APT increasing the value of metadata

APT subject headings used: awnings barbecues beer caravan parks caravans chairs country life